I have a lot of friends who are immigrants, many of whom are Muslim, and an at-least-equal number of friends who are native-born Americans (several of whom are also Muslim). Among many in both groups are people who express confidence in the US Constitution to serve as a bulwark against any abuse or deprivation of civil rights and constitutional liberties on the part of the new Administration. Without exception, they have an almost religious reverence for the Constitution as the secular equivalent of Martin Luther’s “mighty fortress”. As someone who also reveres the Constitution – a secular faith I came to rather late in life -- and who shares that almost-religious regard for the Document, I have no wish to disabuse them of this attitude. But I want their reverence to be a historical...

I hesitate to "recycle" or reprint previous posts, in this case, a post from July of 2015, but the recent grand jury decision completely exonerating Planned Parenthood (PP) overrules my reticence. (It also bears emphasizing that the refusal to indict [a] occurred in Texas, one of the most abortion-hostile States in the Union, a State whose legislature recently passed a law resulting in abortion clinics being separated by hundreds of miles; [b] that has a conservative Republican governor and lieutenant governor; and [c] that the case was argued before the grand jury by a conservative Republican district attorney, Devon Anderson.) But, on the contrary, evidence was found warranting charges against the oh-so-ironically named Center for Medical Progress. Not that mere facts will stop co...

It is doubtless understandable that, by the time Carly Fiorina jumped on the conservative / pro-life bandwagon vis a vis Planned Parenthood (PP) and the notorious clandestine videos, she found the conservative / evangelical-Christian right wing already on board. Even so, this is odd company for Fiorina to keep, most especially in light of the fact that, despite conservative evangelicals’ enthusiasm about policing the morals of others, the religious right’s continuing silence on the ethics of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in editing the videos is all the more puzzling. I mean all the videos – all of which I have watched, and all of whose transcripts I have read -- not just the one alluded to by Christianity Today. So far, I am aware of no religious right spokesperson or organization...